On Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by Google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:
Championship Weekend
Sunday, January 18, at 3:05 p.m. ET, on Fox
Green Bay Packers 22, at Seattle Seahawks 28
This game was one of the craziest football games I’ve ever seen. It’s probably going to have been one of the craziest football games your sports-fan friends or colleagues have ever seen either. The Seahawks were expected to win but came out incredibly flat in the first half. They couldn’t seem to do anything good on offense, and although their great defense was limiting the damage by holding the Packers to field goals on all but one Packers’ possession, things looked bleak for Seattle. At half-time the score was 16-0 in favor of the Packers. The Seahawks played better in the second half but it wasn’t until late in the fourth quarter that crazy things started to happen. With a little less than four minutes remaining in the game, the Seahawks were down by 12 points. They drove down the field, got a touchdown. Now they were down by five points with a little more than two minutes left. They attempted an onside kick, which is when they kick the ball off but instead of kicking it all the way down the field for the other team to get, they kick it mostly sideways and up in the air and try to run down the field to get it themselves. This move, which works about 20% of the time, was successful. The Seahawks got the ball, and very quickly moved it down the field to get another touchdown! Now they are up by one point and decide to go for a two point conversion to make the lead three instead. This move, which is successful about 50% of the time, also worked out for the Seahawks. So, the Seahawks have a three point lead but there’s almost a minute and a half left in the game. The Packers get the ball, and tie the game with a field goal to send it to overtime. In overtime, the Seahawks get the ball and score a touchdown to win the game.
Line to say to football fans: Whoa! That was the craziest game ever!
Line to say to Seahawks fans: You never gave up hope? That was so courageous of you and your team paid you back!
Line to say to Packers fans: I am so, so sorry. Can I buy you lunch today?
Sunday, January 18, at 6:40 p.m. ET, on CBS
Indianapolis Colts 7, at New England Patriots 45
This game had none of the drama of the earlier game. The two teams had played earlier this season and the Patriots won 42-20 mostly because they Colts could not stop them from running the ball whenever and wherever they wanted to. Despite New England coach, Bill Belichick’s, well-deserved reputation for creatively inventing new game plans to match every situation his team is in, when something works, he’s not afraid to go back to it. The Colts could not stop the Patriot’s run game in this game either. Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount ran for 148 yards and three touchdowns. The game was played under somewhat strange circumstances, an unseasonably warm but fierce rain-storm and potentially with under-inflated balls (Yahoo Sports went with the clever “deflate-gate” rather than the obvious “ball-gate”) but you get the feeling that nothing was going to stop the Patriots in this game.
Line to say to football fans: The second game wasn’t quite as much fun as the first, huh?
Line to say to Patriots fans: How you feeling about facing the Seahawks in the Super Bowl?
Line to say to Colts fans: Hard to lose but better in some ways to lose that way than the way the Packers lost.
What’s Next: The Super Bowl! New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, February 1, 6:30 p.m. on NBC. Tons of coverage on our website in the next two weeks.
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